Woke New York Times accused of racism by its own union

On Saturday, New York Times management denied allegations of "racially targeting" employees during its investigation into who leaked information about an unreleased podcast episode that discussed the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas and the sexual assaults that occurred during it.

According to The Wrap, the NewsGuild of New York, the union representing Times journalists, accused the outlet of targeting staff "for their national origin, ethnicity and race,” during its internal investigation.

In a post on X, the Guild vowed to "vigorously defend our members and their rights, and ensure that all our members are protected in a workplace free from harassment and racial profiling."

In response, New York Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha told the Wrap, "The NewsGuild’s claim that we targeted people based on their associations or ethnicity is preposterous." She added, "While we aren’t going to comment on internal matters, as we’ve said before, the work of our newsroom requires trust and collaboration, and we expect all of our colleagues to adhere to these values.”

In a memo to staff, executive editor Joseph Kahn and managing editors Marc Lacey and Carolyn Ryan said, "We are currently undertaking an inquiry to determine how outside media got access to information in confidential planning documents and draft scripts The Daily team was using in preparing an episode."

"We undertook the inquiry for a simple reason,” the memo claimed. “Using access to our publishing systems to reveal pre-publication details of our journalism to people outside The Times crosses a clear red line. It threatens the culture of trust essential to the intensive editing process in every part of the newsroom.”

A report in the Intercept claimed that freelance journalist Anat Schwartz' article "Screams Without Words" about the sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorism on Oct. 7 was supposed to be turned into an episode of its podcast "The Daily," but failed to get through a fact check. In response to the report, the Times claimed that no episode of "The Daily" had been killed "due to fact-checking failures."

The Times reportedly defended its coverage of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, and said that Schwartz, who reported on the sexual violence for the outlet, had committed "unacceptable violations" when she liked a post advocating for Israel to turn Gaza "into a slaughterhouse," which reportedly she apologized for.  A Times spokesperson said that a review of her social media is ongoing, and her name has not appeared in the paper since.